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It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
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My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl.
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The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
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The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
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Caricature is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius.
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To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.
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Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
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Do not forget that small daily actions do or undo character.
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Everything that is popular is wrong.
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Travel ennobles the spirit and does away with our prejudices.
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Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.
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The great poet is always a seer, seeing less with the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of the mind.
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A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.
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One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
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But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.
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Alone, and without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.
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It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
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To get into the best society nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people.
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But I am afraid that we are beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
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God and other artists are always a little obscure....
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Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.
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Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.
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I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.
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Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.